State recycling law has unintended consequences in SF

But the state’s Bottle Bill, passed in 1987, has created a new problem here, a crime syndicate with sophisticated bottle and can collection sites, filling large flat bed trucks with enough recyclables to earn thousands of dollars a year. But the real story is that they are using the poorest street people to do their collecting for them.

It is a bad system for everyone. The scavengers are being victimized, the operators are ripping off the poor and contributing to higher collection rates from Recology, the city’s collection agency.